Student champion of on-line business game
Janel Shoun |
Two Lipscomb University students are rolling in money after their companies sold millions of sneakers around the globe. But it hasn’t affected their attitude or their standard of living as all that money is all just virtual profits from The Business Strategy Game, a 12-year-old online game designed to teach business students how to compete in the global market arena.
Patrick O’Rourke, a Franklin resident and a graduate of Lipscomb’s business college this December with a finance/economics and management bachelor’s, took top honors in his “industry” in the Best Strategy Invitational this month. His roommate, Chris Conn, of Brentwood, December grad with an accounting and finance/economics degree, was part of a team of three who earned third place in their “industry.”
Both students, along with Brandon Maxwell, Nashville, December grad in management and marketing, and Jeff Staverosky, Gilbertsville, PA, December grad in finance/economics and management, spent two weeks at a computer charting a 10-year course for their shoe companies. Participants must make decisions about plant operations, distribution, advertising, work force compensation and a host of other factors.
The key to O’Rourke’s dominance was to secure big-name celebrity contracts to endorse his shoes and to produce a shoe slightly less expensive to manufacture, creating a “niche market,” he said.
His company, called Fosheezies, also declined to spend money on the “private label market,” manufacturing private label shoes for large footwear retail chains, which further separated him from the pack.
“Basically I tried to stay as far away from my competitors as I could,” said O’Rourke, who touched base with past Lipscomb winners to boost his chances of winning this semester.
At the end of his virtual 10 years, Fosheezies, was selling an average of 2 million shoes in each of four markets: North America, Europe/Africa, Asia/Pacific and Latin America.
The Business Strategy Game was created in 1990 by two professors at the University of Alabama and is used in universities all over the world. This past September, eight thousand students began playing the game, including Steve Little’s policy and strategy class at Lipscomb.
“Everyone goes into that class hearing the horror stories of how much work it is,” said O’Rourke, who has a job lined up with Strategic Financial Partners in Nashville. “You hear a lot of stories about the game. I went in wanting to win! I didn’t want to have to write a paper at the end of class. That was my motivation.”
All the students around the globe compete against each other to create the best performing business. The students’ performance is scored based on earnings per share, return on investment, stock price appreciation and credit rating.
The Lipscomb class fielded eight teams, who played the game from mid-September to mid-November. O’Rourke’s team was the highest scoring Lipscomb team. In addition to bragging rights, any team that scores within the top 20 worldwide on return in equity is invited to the Best Strategy Invitational, held Dec. 4-17.
Based on performance in the game and additional class work, O’Rourke, Conn, Maxwell and Staverosky were selected to play in the invitational.
O’Rourke, competing as an individual, was placed in “Industry 13,” competing against nine other teams hailing from California, New Orleans, Alabama and South Africa, among others. Conn, Maxwell and Staverosky started a company called Easy Shoes in “Industry 12” competing against eight teams from Pennsylvania, Florida and Australia, among others. There were 22 “industry” team groups in the invitational.
O’Rourke swept his industry, becoming a grand champion, and the Easy Shoes team came in third within their industry. Lipscomb has had one other grand champion in the four times, over two years, it has competed in the game, said Little, instructor of management at Lipscomb.